How a TV Reporter's Segment on Counting Kicks Saved Her Baby (and Could Save Yours, Too)

When local TV reporter Emily Price went to film a segment on a group of women urging expectant moms to count their babies’ kicks every day, she never could have guessed the experience would help save the life of her own child.

At the time, Price wasn’t even pregnant. As a reporter with the CBS affiliate in Des Moines, Iowa, she listened as the women shared their own emotional stories: Four of them had each lost a daughter to stillbirth, and the fifth woman’s daughter lived for only eight days.

The women hoped their Count the Kicks campaign would save others from experiencing the same grief. By tracking fetal movement daily in the third trimester, pregnant moms could catch signs of distress in time to get help, they told Price.

Almost a year later to the day, their advice suddenly became very relevant. Price, 30 weeks pregnant with her first child, noticed the baby’s movements had slowed. Instead of second-guessing herself, she contacted her obstetrician and quickly went to the hospital. She was having contractions, she was informed, and it was way too early.

Price and her husband took the news in stride at first, but when a nurse arrived with a shot that she said would increase the baby’s chance of survival, terror began to set in, Price recalls.

In the end, the doctors’ early intervention was able to stop the labor. After weeks of strict bed rest, Price gave birth at 40 weeks to a healthy boy. She now credits the five founders of Count the Kicks with helping to save her son’s life.

The stories of the women had stayed with her, she says, because they took their own tragedy and transformed it into action.

“To take their pain and turn it into fuel, and to want to keep other women and families from going through what they went through … it never left me,” she says. “They are really women warriors.”

For Tiffan Yamen, one of the five, the campaign was a labor of love for her little girl, Madeline, who was stillborn at 37 weeks after a knotted nuchal cord caused distress during delivery. At first, the women had started meeting so they could grieve together. But soon they began to wonder: What if we could save even one life?

Their effort has paid off. The campaign’s message has spread far and wide, reaching both providers and moms in their home state of Iowa and a growing number of people nationwide. They now offer a free app (for Apple and Android phones) that helps moms-to-be do the counting, as well as a simple set of instructions to help women in their third trimester understand their babies’ normal movement patterns and identify changes.

Keep in mind, it is normal during this stage for babies to sleep deeply in the womb (something you’ll be grateful for after they are born). To determine if any decrease in activity might be worth a call to your medical practitioner, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends you begin counting kicks daily between 26 and 28 weeks of pregnancy. Pick a regular time when your baby is usually active. While sitting or laying down, tally how long it takes your baby to kick ten times. Once you’ve established a pattern, you’ll have a better idea of what is typical and what may not be.

In the years since the founders launched the local Count the Kicks campaign in 2009, Iowa’s stillbirth rate dropped by 26 percent while the national rate stayed flat. Where once they dreamed of saving just one life with their efforts, they now believe they have helped to save many dozens or even more.

Now they are launching a new campaign: Save 6,000 Babies. If they can get the national stillbirth rate to drop by the same percentage as they did in Iowa, that’s how many babies could be saved each year, Yamen says hopefully.

For the time being, news from families helped by the group often arrives in the form of a thank-you note from a mom, sometimes written in the middle of the night.

“It’s so overwhelming to know that the work we’re doing has a mom up in the middle of the night seeing her baby. Because we would have given anything to be up in the middle of the night seeing our babies,” she says.

Price, no longer a TV reporter, has become the organization’s board president. And her son has grown into an exuberant, joyful, smart and curious 6-year-old with a love for dinosaurs and baseball. When Price was pregnant with her second child — now a 1-year-old named Lyla — Hayden helped her count the kicks.

“We would lay on the couch and he would talk to her, and he loved feeling her move,” Price says. “It was a great way for him to get to know his sister.”

Written by Samantha Gross

Samantha Gross spent a decade as a journalist with The Associated Press, covering everything from the fight over the fate of Terri Schiavo to the Hudson River landing of US Airways Flight 1549. After completing a fellowship at the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, she launched the in-person magazine StoryTour, which brings live journalism and small-group storytelling onto the streets of New York City. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and an endlessly entertaining toddler.